


fear has gripped me but here I go

by pentipus



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Body Horror, Gore, Hallucinations, M/M, Self-Harm, gross sex I guess, phantom periods, phantom pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-19
Updated: 2015-09-20
Packaged: 2018-04-21 10:59:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4826567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pentipus/pseuds/pentipus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Between the wreckage of one death and the next I still managed to find my way to the grand vault of Hannibal’s office, an open crypt for his collected curio, myself included.</p>
<p>I talked to hear him talk, and when he did I watched his mouth to avoid his eyes, cataloging the careful minutiae of his movements.</p>
<p>When I went home I thought about the wide spread of his hands and wondered if he thought about mine. I wrapped my fingers around my own neck and pushed down against my throat, imagining the things he might say to me before the end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Something shifts in the darkness, pulling apart the sutures that draw the walls of my little home around me. Plaster and wood and mortar and brick clinging together as the stitches are plucked open one by one.

There is a hand in my hair, long fingers around the back of my head, and another pressing flat against my stomach, putting pressure on an exit wound that _he_ put there.

I opened my eyes and all I could hear was the panting of the dogs in the darkness.

I was alone, and yet. And yet.

 

Between the wreckage of one death and the next I still managed to find my way to the grand vault of Hannibal ’s office, an open crypt for his collected curio, myself included.

I talked to hear him talk, and when he did I watched his mouth to avoid his eyes, cataloging the careful minutiae of his movements.

When I went home I thought about the wide spread of his hands and wondered if he thought about mine. I wrapped my fingers around my own neck and pushed down against my throat, imagining the things he might say to me before the end.

I pulled the blade of a hunting knife across the tight skin of my thighs until my bed was soaked with blood, sodden underneath me. I imagined that my body was menstruating, cleansing itself, readying itself for a new life.

I put my hand on the wet sheets and I breathed in the hot copper smell of my own insides. I brought my hand to my face and pressed my tongue flat against my palm to taste myself as he might taste me. How the devil would press his forked tongue against me.

I imagined him fucking into me, into a hole I had made myself. The stretch and pull of his cock tearing open the wound in my side, the rush of blood pouring out between us. I felt him ploughing through my viscera, his hands burning holes where he gripped me, searing down to the yellow fat above my muscles .

“How do you feel, Will?” he asked. “How do you feel today?”

“Fucked,” I replied slowly, deliberately.

He looked across at me, his hands folded on his knees, and I felt his heart beating inside me. I wondered if he could feel it too.

 

I knew that taking a life was as intimate as making one; the same sounds, the same pleas. To be honest sex didn’t particularly interest me, but when I thought of Hannibal opening up a new hole in me and pushing inside I felt aroused. I would grip my cock and hold it tight, my fingers a hot box around me. I would shift around until I felt desperate, lying on my belly and rutting against the mattress until I fell asleep hard, thinking of Hannibal.

 

At first I didn’t tell him about my phantom periods, but in the end I mentioned it in passing, interested to see what he would make of it.

“Some cultures believe that menstruation is a symbol of returning power,” Hannibal said after a moment’s consideration. “A cyclical source of purification.”

I laughed, looking away. “It doesn’t feel like that.”

“Does it frighten you?” Hannibal asked, watching me.

“Sometimes,” I said truthfully. “Sometimes I wake up and I think that I’ve miscarried a child. Sometimes I can see it.”

“The child?”

“I see it on the bed, among the sheets like-” I chewed the words around my mouth for a moment before I replied, “like a red cholelith.”

Hannibal’s mouth curved at the description, either disgusted or amused. “Perhaps you’re worried about losing a part of yourself; you’re worried about some part of you dying.”

“It’s like a forced abortion,” I said. “I want it to grow in me, but when I see it dead on the bed I know it’s for the best.”

_There is a darkness in me that I know I should destroy, but when I am with you all I want to do is nurture it._

Hannibal made a considered face and I felt, absurdly, as though he could hear what I was thinking.

 

I dreamt of Abigail.

I dreamt that she was holding my hand, running with me across a grey beach under a grey sky. We were pursued by a great wave, rising impossibly high above us, washing across the shore. As we ran she started to shrink; she became so small that I had to scoop her up in my arms like a baby. And as the wave thundered behind us she continued to shrink, smaller and smaller, until she was a pebble, until she was a grain of rice. The wave towered above me as Abigail shrunk so small that she slipped through my fingers, lost in the sand under my feet.

I turned as the wave crashed down.

 

I cut myself again, neat lines on the insides of my thighs so that the hot blood ran down between my legs. I placed my hand on my stomach to feel the baby that Hannibal put inside me, but there was nothing there. I was barren.

In the night I dreamt that I was giving birth, a throbbing ache spreading from the backs of my thighs to the back of my neck. I looked down to see the flesh between my legs splitting open, watching in horror as some hot mess tried to slither out.

I woke with a start, scrabbling with the sheets, throwing them away as I reached down between my legs. There was blood there, but my anatomy remained the same, the soft handful of my cock red and wet in the darkness.

I flicked the light on and sat on the edge of the bed, my fingers curling into the wet sheets.

I watched the dogs for a moment before getting up to shower, imagining the pink water leaching into the soil.

 

“Tell me, Will, do you ever dream of fire?”

“I dream of water,” I said. “I dream of the ocean. I dream of great waves above me.”

“And are they destructive?”

I nod. “The wave comes in and somehow I survive. When it pulls back out I’m the only thing left standing.”

“Strong,” Hannibal states.

“Alone,” I correct him.

He makes a note.


	2. Chapter 2

I waited in the little room outside Hannibal’s office; a dull vestibule where I sat with my knees together, waiting to be drawn into the warm nave of his church.

“I don’t want to be alone,” I heard myself say as I sat opposite him that day. I pushed my face against the palms of my hands and I could feel sweat under my hairline with the tips of my fingers.

“Do you feel alone?” Hannibal asked, his tone both steady and steadying.

“Yes,” I said quietly, looking up at him. I saw his eyelids drop just a fraction; I saw the disappointed twitch of his jaw. “Yes, I feel alone,” I said again.

I watched the dark of his eyes as he wrestled with himself. _And what of me?_ He wanted to ask. _What about me, Will?_ But instead he reached for his notebook and drew a breath, saying, “Tell me more about the menstruation.”

I considered him and my mouth opened and closed once before I said anything. “I want to think that the blood is cleansing, I want- I want to think there’s a chance I could make something from it. When I-” I paused, drawing my hand in a line across the top of my thigh. “When I cut myself I imagine the blood is- is a monthly blood.”

Hannibal didn’t miss a beat, he nodding before saying, “Self harm is a powerful coping mechanism. The areas of the brain that deal with physical pain are the same that deal with emotional pain; self harming allows us to control the physical and therefore it can help to control the emotional as well.”

I shook my head minutely.

“No?”

“It’s-” _It is creation, it is my own Genesis, taking a bone from my own body to make something new_. “It’s more than that.”

“You want a child.” It wasn’t a question so I didn’t answer. “Or you would like to carry a child?”

“I feel like there is only death inside me, I want to believe there can be life too.”

Hannibal nodded again, an inclination of his head. He spread his fingers across his thighs and I made myself look away.

 

“You look troubled, Will,” Hannibal said the next time I saw him, the dusky light from the high windows throwing his face into dazzling lights and darks. “More so than usual,” he added with a small smile.

I stared at him and thought of the blood between my legs, my phantom amnion empty across my bed sheets. “I have been having dreams that are... difficult to process.”

“Difficult?”

I stared, wondering whether to lie to not. Wondering whether Hannibal would know.

“What is the subject of these dreams?”

I let my eyes flick to his and I could see the recognition instantly in his eyes.

“You dream of me,” he said lightly. He paused, looking at me as I tried to look away. “What happens in these dreams?”

“You give me a child,” I said, finally looking past him.

Hannibal was surprised, I could tell by the brief flash of the whites of his eyes. “Do you accept this child?” he said, gauging.

“I bare it,” I said, looking back at him.

I watched his mouth; I could see his throat working as he formulated his reply, his jaw clenching.

“I impregnate you.”

I nodded. “I am... impregnated by you. In my dreams.”

He looked down at his notebook. “Does this make you father or mother?”

I shrugged. “It makes me a vessel, that’s all. A vehicle.”

“You don’t see the child as part of you?”

I shook my head. “You put a creature in me and all I can do is carry it. The child is a lungworm and I am just the lung.”

“What do you think this means, Will?”

_It means I can be cleansed and I can create but I can only do it with you. I can only take what you give me and make something new._

“It means- It means I’m a mess,” I said, and I almost laughed, shaking my head. “I’m just a mess.”

Hannibal pushed himself up from the chair opposite and stepped towards me. I found myself pulling away, pressing my hot back against the leather of the chair as he crossed the quiet space between us.

“In your dreams,” Hannibal said carefully, drawing closer, “do I force myself on you?”

When I swallowed my throat clicked loudly. “No,” I said, my voice almost a whisper. “I want it.”

Hannibal stood over me like a monolith and I felt desperate, until finally he nodded and walked around me to his desk, fetching his decanter and two crystal tumblers.

“These feelings are normal, Will. We call it transference; there is something in you that you lack, and you reach out to a source you feel can provide it,” he looked over at me as he poured two fingers of whiskey in each glass, smiling. “You shouldn’t feel ashamed.”

_I fantasise about you cutting me open and fucking the bloody holes you make in me._

I nodded. I was still, and then I nodded again.

 

The times I spent at Hannibal’s house were times I felt wholly protected from the world, wrapped in the warming womb of those dark walls. The house smelled rich and ancient, it was a still-life made real, a dark fresco in three dimensions.

Hannibal cheerily placed food in front of me and watched me as I ate beside him, knowing that I knew. A circle of enlightenment that began and ended with the red meat on my tongue.

“How are your dreams of late?” Hannibal asked me, mischief in his voice.

“Much the same.”

“I’ve been wondering; do you ever give birth to the child that I give you?” He stared at me, his eyes impossibly dark. It was a question he would never ask in the asylum of his office, he would never have revealed so gentle a part of himself in that authoritarian bubble.

I pushed the tip of my tongue between my lips and bit at it. “Sometimes,” I said.

Hannibal reached for his wine glass, tipping the red liquid to one side and then slowly to the other. “And what of it?”

“What of what?”

“What do you give birth to?” he asked, holding the glass by his chin and staring at me over its rim.

I swallowed.

 _It is you_ , I thought, _and it is me. I open up at the base of my belly and the world of my dream twists around, so that the inside of me becomes the outside and there we are. Both of us new, together._

_You put yourself into me and we’re both born again._

“I-” I stammered and looked away from him. “I can never seem to focus on it.”

Hannibal knew I was lying, I could tell. He made a little noise, as though accepting an interesting fact about the wine, but he knew I was lying.

“You feel alone and you don’t know how to remedy the fact. You see me giving you a child, an object to cure your loneliness.”

_But the child is us, Hannibal._

“You fear losing this cure; you fear a miscarriage of love.”

_I fear the cure, and I fear the love._

Hannibal leant forward, almost conspiratorial. “But you are not alone, Will,” he said. “You cannot lose the love that has been afforded to you.”

“Afforded to me by whom?”

Hannibal smiled.

My heart hammered inside the pale cage of my ribs. I imagined Hannibal’s hand reaching slowly inside me, his fist closing around the lump of my beating heart, his fingers slipping in the gore.

I sat and watched as Hannibal placed his glass of wine back on the dark tablecloth, as his hand reached out and closed around my wrist. I imagined the blood gushing out of me as it rushed down between my legs, pouring over my shoes and seeping through the gaps in Hannibal’s dining room floorboards like flood water.

My ears popped, a high tinnitus buzz that seemed to grow louder and louder as Hannibal pulled my palm up to his mouth and closed his teeth around the flesh under my thumb, his eyes on mine.

As I watched him I felt the great wave crashing down upon me, thundering in my ears.

**Author's Note:**

> I am on [tumblr](http://agent-carnter.tumblr.com)!


End file.
